


Midwinter

by Gryphonrhi



Series: Lares & Penates [5]
Category: Forever Knight
Genre: Gen, Soliloquy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-12
Updated: 2010-01-12
Packaged: 2017-10-06 05:23:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/50107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gryphonrhi/pseuds/Gryphonrhi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the longest night of the year.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Midwinter

**Author's Note:**

> Written for midwinter's and from some prompts provided by devohoneybee: _blood, old gods, the quality of light, memento mori, heart, and radio_. Beta by devo &amp; tarsh.

The longest of nights unrolls in front of us still, dark and thick and endless as ever. The year grows old, and the days grow short, and the night lurks in wait in the shadows and colorless skies of winter. Leaves fall and the shadows protect the night until it gains the strength to return, as it does sooner and sooner each day.

The skies and streetlights themselves are different, are they not? Not as bright, not as clear, thicker and less comforting, and any softness in the night is the softness of a pillow pressed over a sleeper's face.

They say 3 AM is the hour when the living are most likely to slide into death. That dark, motionless hour of the night, when it's so much simpler to simply... let go. To slide away. Perhaps it is. This is the time of year when the living slide into illness, dear listeners. When the air itself is too cold to breathe and the blood pools thick in the veins until it is almost too much trouble for your heart to beat. When the sap slides down, and the trees grow still, and the shadows pool, and it all slides into that deepening, darkening, lengthening night.

In this time, there is no need for a minder to chase after heroes and whisper _'memento mori.'_ In these days, the trick is to remember to live. To work on small things, gifts to cheer the heart and lighten your spirit. To string your lights and set your candles to brighten the night in hopes of holding some of that light in your heart against that crouching, creeping shadow. To worship your gods, old and new alike, because you fear that if you do not remember them... they might not remember _you_. And it is dark enough already, is it not, without that final fall into shadows, and darkness? Into those pits of despair whose measurement might, in fact, be six feet long by three feet wide by six. feet. deep.

Oh, yes, full fathom deep we bury our dead, that their empty, departed bodies should not feed those creatures seeking to avoid death themselves. Full foolishness deep we bury our old gods, in musty libraries and dense-written papers that drink more life from the worship than ever Hollywood's vampires drank from victims, and yet it does not stop newer religions from taking up their trappings, adopting their holy days and holy ways and even, at times, stealing their very names or putting new names over old attributes. This, too, is feeding on the old and weak so that the young and opportunistic do not die, and this, too, we refuse to acknowledge, do we not?

And all this has taken up only a few minutes of your night, gentle listener. This night still mounds around you, dark, and dense, and ready to fall. And in the night full of lights and the future full of festivals of light, still you sit and listen to your radio instead of preparing your presents for those around you: your children, your coworkers, the ones you lie down with in the dark and hope to wake with in the light... if it arrives. If you notice. If you find time, outside your busy, bounded world, to look out and see the sky and wonder when the moon gained such color and when the darkness grew so light.

_Memento vivi_, gentle listener. If you can.

Good night. Sleep tight. Be sure it's the bed bugs, if something bites.


End file.
